The Independent News Source

Distinctly Catholic

One of the great things about NCR is that it is home to many voices. Oftentimes I find myself nodding in agreement with what I read posted by other contributors and other times I find myself shaking my head.

But, it is not often that I find something that makes me feel sick to my stomach. Alas, Renee Schafer Horton's post about Israeli settlements was jaw-dropping.

Sometimes, I hate my own. Recently, this sentiment comes to me when I get an email from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. They are in fundraising mode, and the issues that open leftie walets are, alas, not my issues. This just came into my inbox:Michael --

Speaker Boehner and House Republicans have gone way too far.

First, they tried to restrict access to reproductive health care. Then, they proposed catastrophic cuts to teachers, nurses, and researchers. Now the Republicans want to control the news.

In fact, House Republicans announced a vote for TOMORROW to cut all federal funding for National Public Radio.

That is the question posed today by Ruth Marcus in an op-ed at the Washington Post. Marcus decides it is better to be a panda and I agree, not least because King Fu Panda was my favorite movie of the past several years. There is a histrionic quality to the cries for deficit reduction. These out-year deficit predictions are not the stuff of alarmism. Ross Perot built his candidacy on the issue in 1992, and he garnered a significant percentage of the electorate, but of course it was Bill Clinton who got the nation's finances in order, and he achieved that without resorting to the kinds of drastic cuts being talked about by the Tea Party and their congressional allies.

University of Pennsylvania Professor Marie Gottschalk has a wonderful essay, reviewing a new book about the death penalty, that is well worth the read. It remains a scandal that America continues to indulge this barbarism. Gottschalk helps explain why and what can be done.

So, House Speaker John Boehner could not corral enough Republican votes to pass the continuing resolution, and so avoid a government shutdown, after 54 Republicans, all of them taking marching orders from the Tea Party, refused to vote for the CR. He had to turn to the Democrats to provide the votes needed to pass the measure.

As America winds down its war in Iraq and tries to figure out what to so in Afghanistan, what are the moral principles that should guide us? As Egypt considers the corruption of its newly deposed regime, questions of restitution and justice must be faced, but how? And, in Libya, the situation grows desperate and one of the things that keeps the West from effective action there is the fear that we can’t control the outcome, that the chaos that might follow the deposition of Gaddafi might be worse his tyranny, but is that fear capable of bearing the moral weight we are putting on it by failing to help civilians who are being slaughtered by a madman?

The Paulus Institute had planned to host a Traditional Latin Mass next month at the National Shrine here in Washington. Last year, you may recall, they had invited Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos to celebrate the Mass but he declined at the last minute after letters emerged in which he had praised a bishop for not cooperating with civil authorities regarding their investigation of a priest-predator. Bishop Slattery stepped in at the last minute and presided at the Mass. It was beautiful in its way, not my cup of tea anymore than a folk Mass is my cup of tea, but, hey, it's a big church. This year, Archbishop J. Augustine DiNoia, of the Congregation for Divine Worship, was supposed to celebrate the Mass but he, too, at the last minute had to withdraw for what the press release from Paulus Institute termed "changed circumstances." Now, the Paulus Institute has cancelled the Mass entirely. Thus, began a flurry of activity at certain conservative blogs and the start of a conspiracy theory worthy of Oliver Stone.

Amidst all the crushing concerns of the world, from the earthquake-tsunami tragedy in Japan to the fresh outbreak of sex abuse cover-up in Philadelphia, to the normal ups-and-downs of quotidian existence, it is good every once in awhile to find something that lifts the human spirit. That something, this time of year, is known as March Madness.

College basketball is simply the best sport going in America today. The level of competition is unlike that found in any other sport. On any given night, any of the top twenty-five or even fifty teams can beat any other team. For something like eight weeks in a row, the team ranked #1 in the nation lost the following week and someone else claimed the top spot, only to be bested in turn, and bumped in the ratings the following week.